The library has added “best bets” to the new easySearch tool. Best bets are commonly searched for library resources. Examples include JSTOR, Pubmed, and Web of Science. Searches for these phrases (as well as known alternate names and misspellings) will return a best bet highlighted at the top of the search results.
To get started, 64 resources have been selected as best bets and are available now via easySearch. As we would like to know how useful this feature is, please leave us feedback.
Thanks to colleagues at North Carolina State University for leading the way in adding best bets to library search and writing about their efforts.
Technical details
Library staff analyzed search logs to find commonly used search terms and matched those terms to appropriate resources. The name, url, and description for each resource is entered into a shared Google Spreadsheet. A script runs regularly to convert the spreadsheet data into Solr documents and posts the updates to a separate Solr core. The Blacklight application searches for best bet matches when users enter a search into the default search box.
Since the library maintains a database of e-resources, in many cases only the identifier for a resource is needed to populate the best bets index. The indexing script is able to retrieve the resource from the database and use that information to create the best bet. This eliminates maintaining data about the resources in multiple places.